Sociologist and political scientist Atilio Boron, who provides his opinion on the presidential election in Venezuela and explains important details on the electoral process taking place. teleSUR
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00:00We continue here in Televisual English providing regular updates of how the Venezuelan presidential
00:12elections are unfolding.
00:13So far everything is going smoothly.
00:16People are voting in peace.
00:17We're now going to go live to Caracas with Argentine sociologist and political scientist
00:22Atilio Boron joining us live from Caracas studios.
00:27Welcome Atilio.
00:28Welcome to From the South.
00:30Hello.
00:31Thank you for the invitation.
00:33It is a pleasure as always to have you with us in our channel.
00:36Atilio, very quickly let's start going into a summary of what has been happening so far
00:41in Venezuela during this electoral day.
00:43What are your opinions?
00:44What are your takes?
00:45You are there.
00:46What have you seen so far?
00:47Well, my opinion is that the electoral process went very, very well.
00:56No incidents were reported all across the country.
01:02People stay in the lines.
01:04In some cases there were long lines.
01:07No complaints.
01:10My feeling is that there was a sort of happiness.
01:16They were very, very happy to be able to vote almost once a year, you know, since the beginning
01:27of the Bolivarian Republic.
01:29They went to the polls in 30 times.
01:32This is the 31st one.
01:35And people are trained.
01:37They like that.
01:38My feeling is that now there was a new group of people who have been out of the polls for,
01:47I would say, 10 years perhaps.
01:50We are now returning to the electoral process.
01:53This has to be with all this conflict with the opposition which did not attend, did not
01:59go to the polls, refused to go to the electoral competition.
02:04And that perhaps made that some of the voters were not used with the new machinery, electoral
02:10machinery that they have, the technology.
02:13Today it's very simple but very accurate.
02:17And for a few people you notice that they were a little bit clumsy in handling the electoral
02:25machine in which they had to push buttons and so on, especially people who are old.
02:31But the rest, you see, I was a little bit concerned that there may have been some provocations
02:40or people saying nasty words to others.
02:46And nothing of that happened, at least in many of the reports I have been receiving
02:51from many states in Venezuela.
02:54So, so far it's an outstanding electoral day.
03:00As you are saying, it's an outstanding electoral day.
03:02What is the message that the Venezuelan people are sending to the world in the face of all
03:07the attempts of destabilizations and discrediting of the electoral system that Venezuela has
03:13had in these past days and months as we were heading to the election day?
03:17Yes, I see that the people are a little bit upset about that, you know, because apparently
03:25there is only one big news in the world, it's the Venezuelan election, with all these accusations
03:32that the elections were rigged and they were not fair.
03:38Apparently nothing else happened in the world.
03:41I was looking before coming here to the south, to the Telesur, you know, looking at the front
03:48pages and the main pages of the papers in Latin America and Spain, and this is the news.
03:57It is incredible, because we have a war in Ukraine, we have a situation, a dramatic genocide
04:03going on in Gaza, and apparently the only important thing in the world is the election
04:10in Venezuela, which is supposed to be a fraudulent election, a rigged election, in which the
04:15government has manipulated all this electoral system to ensure the victory of President Manujo.
04:25Leaving aside opinions like those issued by the Carter Center, you know, the Carter Center
04:33is a very important NGO devoted to the study of the electoral processes worldwide, in which
04:40they say that the electoral system in Venezuela is perhaps one of the most accurate, reliable
04:47and transparent in the world.
04:51And this was also, well, let me put this clearly in the mouth of former President James Carter,
05:01who said that the Venezuelan system, he said that a few years ago, is more reliable and
05:07transparent than the American system.
05:09So nobody is considering or looking at the electoral process in America as something
05:16very, very complicated and unreliable.
05:20We know what happened in the last presidential election, and even today you know that the
05:26majority of Republican voters think that they were stolen and that Mr. Trump was the
05:33winner of the election.
05:35And this means that the electoral system in America, in the United States, is of a much
05:41lower quality than the electoral system here in Venezuela.
05:45However, nobody is talking about that in the press, and the problem is that there is going
05:53to be a fraud in Venezuela.
05:55And if the extreme right does not win the election, it's because there was something
06:02wrong, something fraudulent, which made possible this outcome.
06:09And they are saying that they are going to take over the streets if the announcement
06:14is that the outcome is in favor of the government.
06:20I am not sure that I'm going to go so far on that.
06:23My feeling is that there is a very fragile connection between a hardline leadership,
06:30especially Mrs. Corina Machado, and the rank-and-file vote, which does not want to have
06:38the guarimbas again in Venezuela, as they have in 2014 and 2017.
06:45Doctor, you were talking about electoral systems like in the U.S.
06:50What is it?
06:51Because we have been hearing, as you have been saying, that it is one of the best in
06:54the world.
06:55What is it, in your opinion, that makes it stand out?
06:57What is it that makes the electoral system in Venezuela so safe and transparent for the
07:02people to be able to trust the electoral system of the country?
07:07Well, it's a system in which there are many instances of verification, you see.
07:14To begin with, you have to go with your ID, which is a document which is very different
07:21from the driver's license, for instance, that you use in the United States.
07:25You need to go with your ID.
07:27Then there is a biometric trial in which you vote with an electronic device.
07:33You have to put your finger there to make sure that nobody is going to vote more than once.
07:39And then you go to a special machine in which all the candidates and all the parties are there.
07:47There is no question that maybe, like in my country, in Argentina, in which there is only
07:54paper ballots, and then somebody goes to the ballot box and takes away the ballots of the
08:05party they don't like.
08:07It is absolutely impossible to do because all are in the machine.
08:11And then the people vote, decide, and they are asked to reconfirm in order to avoid that
08:19somebody made a mistake.
08:21They can check what was their decision or his or her decision.
08:28And once they vote, automatically there is a printing machine which prints the vote in paper.
08:37And then you put that in a ballot box.
08:39And when the process ends, when everybody has voted in Venezuela, in a particular voting center,
08:48you have to make the counting, which is the counting of the machine, of the computer,
08:54and the counting of the paper votes.
08:58And they have to match.
08:59And if they don't match, they will revise the whole process, but the paper will prevail over the machine
09:07because the paper cannot be falsified.
09:11While we know that there are informatic cybernetic attacks which could eventually distort the will of the voters.
09:26So it's an extremely safe system.
09:29We don't have a system like this in most of the countries.
09:35For instance, in Germany, there are no voting machines.
09:42You only have the paper vote, which on the one hand is okay,
09:46but then the problem is of the counting of the vote, etc.
09:50It's a system, in the case of Venezuela, which is much easier, much more reliable, much quicker, faster,
09:58because it is important to have the outcome of the electoral process, not in two or three days.
10:03But you have to have it tonight.
10:06And they are trying to do that.
10:07And they have all the technology.
10:09Really, in this case, there is no question that Venezuela is at the top in terms of electoral system,
10:18machineries, counting, voting countings, and so on.
10:23Despite that, if you read the papers in Latin America or El PaÃs in Spain or La Vanguardia or ABC in Madrid,
10:33and all that worry, too much worry about the fraud, how can you make a fraud?
10:39It's impossible.
10:41And then, I really don't know.
10:44But of course, this is the narrative which has been established,
10:49because I will say something which I dislike very much.
10:52I wouldn't like to say this, but this is the truth,
10:56is that for the extreme right, elections are just a pretext.
11:00What they really want is what, in the American jargon, talk regime change.
11:09So, they participate in the elections, but they participate perhaps knowingly that they will not win.
11:17But that they can create a serious disorder, saying, accusing the government that there was a rigged election,
11:26and therefore, there is an autocracy, authoritarianism, going to the streets, demonstrations,
11:32in many cases, violent demonstrations.
11:36And this is not only the case of Venezuela.
11:40Look what happened in the United States.
11:43For the first time in history, the Congress was assaulted by a large mob of people
11:51who produced a couple of deaths, and so on.
11:56And take the case of Brazil, in which one year after the assault of the US Congress, the Capitol,
12:04we have the experience, after the Lula election,
12:08of the Bolsonaro voters and militants taking over the main buildings in Brasilia.
12:16That means that, well, the elections are all right, so far as we win.
12:22And we is the extreme right, the far right, which unfortunately, today, is perhaps the most widely expression of the right.
12:35As a political scientist, I could be asked what is the difference between the right 40 years ago and today.
12:4540 years ago, you have in many countries, in Latin America, not to mention Europe,
12:50a right which believed in democracy.
12:53They bet on democracy, okay?
12:56They could be more or less conservative, more or less liberal, but they were not fascist.
13:01Today, what we see is a process by which the far right has engulfed all the formations of the non-fascist right.
13:12And there is a process, a general process of fascistization of the right in our countries.
13:18My country, unfortunately, Argentina, is a perfect case.
13:24The case of Venezuela is also the same, in which you have non-democratic leaders, violent leaders,
13:31which really represent a good part of the right in this country.
13:35And if you look at the case of Chile, the last election was an election which was won by the central left coalition,
13:45but in a very close race with a fascist like José Antonio Castro.
13:51And, well, the situation in the Colombian election was not different.
13:57The main exception, it's a brilliant exception, is the case of Mexico,
14:02in which there was no room for the development so far, up to now at least, of a far right political party.
14:13And that is good news for Latin America that we have a political system in Mexico in which there is a right,
14:20but the right is still abiding to the democratic rules of the game.
14:24Not the case in Venezuela, which, you know, especially when you look at the case of Leopoldo López,
14:31or Corina Machado, or Julio Borges, or whichever.
14:38In general, they don't believe in democracy or believe that democracy is only valid when they win,
14:44not when the others win the election.
14:49And that's the situation today, and in a few hours we are going to have a clear,
14:55definitive response to all these elaborations on the electoral day here in Venezuela.
15:02Doctor, one very quick question before finishing this important interview.
15:07What is, in your opinion, what is the impact that these elections will have for the region and for the international arena?
15:15Well, very important, because Venezuela is a country which is extremely important.
15:21I am not flattering my Venezuelan friends, I am just making a geopolitical statement.
15:28Venezuela is a major reserve of oil in the world.
15:34It has great deposits of gold and all kinds of minerals, water, whatever.
15:44It is a country enormously endowed with natural resources of all sorts.
15:51In addition, it is very close to the United States.
15:54This is something which is not a minor question.
15:57Just think that an oil tanker coming from Saudi Arabia takes approximately 40 days of very difficult navigation to reach Houston,
16:09in which they have to go and transfer the oil.
16:14It takes only four days going from Venezuela to Houston.
16:19For the U.S., then Venezuela is extremely important in a moment in which there is this race to the natural resources,
16:27because people who before did not go to get oil or copper or lithium or whatever,
16:37or there are especially two big countries like China and India.
16:42If you add all of those countries, China and India are about 3 billion people in the world,
16:51almost 40% of the world population, and that is something which is extremely worrisome for the U.S.
16:58And this is why the general of the Southern Command, Laura Richardson,
17:04has said repeatedly that a sign of a good policy in our countries,
17:11I mean the countries in Latin America, should be to keep Chinese, Russians and Iranians out of the region.
17:19The problem is that those are countries which have a special interest in the natural resources we have in Latin America,
17:28and therefore the importance for the U.S. to get these competitors out of this region,
17:36out of the hemisphere, as they call it, is of the utmost importance,
17:41and will do whatever is necessary to prevail in that sense.
17:45The problem is that economic relations may be running in an opposite direction
17:51of what the State Department or the White House think,
17:54and therefore countries like, I don't know, Brazil or Chile.
17:58Chile may be very, very loyal in general to the orientations of the White House,
18:05but China is the first commercial partner of Chile.
18:12So President Boric is torn apart between loyalty to the guidelines of the State Department or the Southern Command,
18:21on the other hand, the stark realities of economics by which China is the main buyer of Chilean natural resources.
18:32And that is the reason why it is so important, the election here in Venezuela,
18:37because if the Bolivarian Revolution is supported once again by the people,
18:46then the chances of going forward in the process of supranational integration,
18:55in the process of the strengthening of UNASUR and CELAC,
19:00will receive a very, very significant and positive impact,
19:06something that is very, very much needed for two reasons.
19:10I'm sorry if I am extending too much this question.
19:13We need a Latin America united, on the one hand, to stop the imperialist process in the region,
19:22the imperialist influence in our countries in terms of politics, economics, culture and so on.
19:30But at the same time, we need a united Latin America to be able to negotiate the position of our region,
19:39Latin America and the Caribbean, I should always say, right?
19:43In a multilateral, in a multipolar world in which we should negotiate our insertion
19:50and the best way to do it is Latin America and the Caribbean are together and not on an individual basis,
20:01because if you have to negotiate on an individual basis with China, with India, with Russia,
20:07your power, negotiation power is quite much reduced.
20:12But if you can go with a Latin America united through schemes like CELAC or MERCOSUR or UNASUR or whatever,
20:21then you have chances to get much more national and international autonomy and this is what we need.
20:28Self-determination is crucial in this moment and if we are united,
20:34our self-determination will be more likely to be established.
20:40Thank you, Dr. Borón, for your valuable inputs hearing from the South.
20:44Okay, thank you and good luck. Bye-bye.
20:49It was our pleasure to have you.
20:51It was Atilio Borón, Argentine political scientist and sociologist,
20:55providing his inputs on this important electoral date being held in Venezuela.
20:59For now, stay tuned with Tresor English for more updates on how the day unfolds.
21:04www.tresorenglish.com